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> This virus kills 0.5 to 1% of infected people across population. It can infect more than 50% of the population. Everyone would know somebody who died because of the virus. The economy can not function when people are dying left and right.

Doesn't around 0.8% of the population die each year normally? So at worst (everyone infected) we'd have a year or two where all-cause mortality roughly doubles (concentrated in people 65+ year olds)? That's a big increase and by no means easy to handle, but surely that shouldn't end or stop the economy like you're claiming.

We don't need to speculate - it is happening in Belarus. Sweden is quite close to a lock-down, but Belarus is far away from a lock-down. Lukaszenko is advising sport, especially on ice and vodka to fight off the virus.

Still, Belarus mobility statistics according to Google [0] are:

Retail & recreation: -16%

Transit stations: -20%

Workplaces: -25%

Their economic activity is certainly reduced right now. People do not want to expose themselves even if their leaders are downplaying it. BTW - Belarus was probably prepared the best in the world for pandemic with 11 beds per 1000 people vs. 5.8 beds per 1000 people in EU in 2010 [2].

So entering speculation again, IMF is projecting 6% GDP contraction in Belarus [1].

Another data point is Open Table (restaurants reservations) data [3] from USA. Most of the drop in reservations happened before lock-down. People decided to not go on their own - on average 73% down before restaurants were ordered to close. My prediction is that up-tick in states that are opening right now will be very small as well.

[0] https://www.gstatic.com/covid19/mobility/2020-04-30_BY_Mobil...

[1] https://www.imf.org/en/Countries/BLR

[2] https://databank.worldbank.org/reports.aspx?source=2&series=...

[3] https://s4.freebeacon.com/up/2020/04/plot2.png

Your statistics don't support your position, that people's natural reaction to the virus would reduce economic productivity as much as the lockdown does.

The economy CAN function when people are dying left and right. It functions every year, with a huge percentage of the population suffering this sort of personal tragedy.

Of course, activity will decline even in the absence of a lockdown, but far less than if nearly the entire population is forced to shelter-at-home for an indeterminant length of time (all the while failing to build herd immunity).

The economy could function, indeed, but they don't seem to [0], certainly not on the baseline level. Human psychology that allowed our ancestors to survive even more deadly plagues is at work here.

And people are correct in their everyday choices, herd immunity is just wrong when you have no idea what this virus actually does to people and you can afford to not get sick. If indeed 50% of people including young and middle age asymptomatic/mild cases of COVID-19 lead to permanent lung damage (we don't know!), then "herd immunity" means destroying health of the population, while killing millions at the same time. We are certain that people needing intrusive ventilation will need years to go back to fully normal life, but they may never recover full health.

And I agree, maybe USA, Africa and India can not afford to suppress the virus. Starvation will very likely be bigger killer in those countries. I was and I still am especially worried about India, because I don't see how they could stop exponential spread even with full lock-down. Social distancing is just impossible there. And they have millions upon millions of people that have to work to eat. Thankfully, India seems to be easing lock-down.

But EU economies certainly can afford lock-down. Even Swedish people paid and are paying heavy economical price to stop the exponential growth. But we did suppress the virus, now we can go back to sort of normal life and keep things under control.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23105922

The voluntary reduction in economic activity is far less disruptive, and extreme, than the mandatory reduction caused by indiscriminate lockdowns.

When voluntary, each individual can judge whether a particular activity should be continued based on their own circumstances and the particularities of that activity, and give up those activities that provide the least economic return relative to risk incurred.

A cookie-cutter rule OTOH has no such intelligence, and leads to a massive amount of waste, from critical activity being prevented that would have provided a large risk-adjusted social benefit.

If you mean in the context of Swedish deaths, those are 2,900 or so deaths, not 0.1 million.

Edit: I interpreted the number to be in the context of Sweden, as it was mentioned just in the sentence prior. Reply updated to make that clear.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-death-... - you're a couple orders of magnitude off the actual death toll.

I may have interpreted the post I responded to incorrectly to be in the context of Swedish numbers, since Sweden was mentioned in the sentence prior to the number that was cited. I have updated my response accordingly.

So, to clarify the number refers to the whole EU (without UK).

Currently there are little bit more than 0.1 million reported deaths across the EU.

And as I was saying, in the best case scenario, based on the current data [0] 1 million more could die if people would live their lives normally.

But people would not live normally as they do not in Sweden or Belarus and economies would be in downfall anyway.

The difference would be in the number of deaths, long term health issues, as well as in the length of the crisis - probably more like 2 years, or until herd immunity trough vaccination.

[0] https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*G6ql9WUz114Mdwktyp53Mg.pn...